If it had at one time been a passage for
eruptive matter thrown out by Snæfell, I still could not understand
why no trace was left of its passage. We kept going down a kind of
winding staircase, which seemed almost to have been made by the hand
of man.

Every quarter of an hour we were obliged to halt, to take a little
necessary repose and restore the action of our limbs. We then sat
down upon a fragment of rock, and we talked as we ate and drank from
the stream.

Of course, down this fault the Hansbach fell in a cascade, and lost
some of its volume; but there was enough and to spare to slake our
thirst. Besides, when the incline became more gentle, it would of
course resume its peaceable course. At this moment it reminded me of
my worthy uncle, in his frequent fits of impatience and anger, while
below it ran with the calmness of the Icelandic hunter.

On the 6th and 7th of July we kept following the spiral curves of
this singular well, penetrating in actual distance no more than two
leagues; but being carried to a depth of five leagues below the level
of the sea. But on the 8th, about noon, the fault took, towards the
south-east, a much gentler slope, one of about forty-five degrees.

Then the road became monotonously easy. It could not be otherwise,
for there was no landscape to vary the stages of our journey.

On Wednesday, the 15th, we were seven leagues underground, and had
travelled fifty leagues away from Snæfell. Although we were tired,
our health was perfect, and the medicine chest had not yet had
occasion to be opened.

My uncle noted every hour the indications of the compass, the
chronometer, the aneroid, and the thermometer the very same which he
has published in his scientific report of our journey. It was
therefore not difficult to know exactly our whereabouts. When he told
me that we had gone fifty leagues horizontally, I could not repress
an exclamation of astonishment, at the thought that we had now long
left Iceland behind us.

"What is the matter?" he cried.

"I was reflecting that if your calculations are correct we are no
longer under Iceland."

"Do you think so?"

"I am not mistaken," I said, and examining the map, I added, "We have
passed Cape Portland, and those fifty leagues bring us under the wide
expanse of ocean."

"Under the sea," my uncle repeated, rubbing his hands with delight.

"Can it be?" I said. "Is the ocean spread above our heads?"

"Of course, Axel. What can be more natural? At Newcastle are there
not coal mines extending far under the sea?"

It was all very well for the Professor to call this so simple, but I
could not feel quite easy at the thought that the boundless ocean was
rolling over my head. And yet it really mattered very little whether
it was the plains and mountains that covered our heads, or the
Atlantic waves, as long as we were arched over by solid granite. And,
besides, I was getting used to this idea; for the tunnel, now running
straight, now winding as capriciously in its inclines as in its
turnings, but constantly preserving its south-easterly direction, and
always running deeper, was gradually carrying us to very great depths
indeed.

Four days later, Saturday, the 18th of July, in the evening, we
arrived at a kind of vast grotto; and here my uncle paid Hans his
weekly wages, and it was settled that the next day, Sunday, should be
a day of rest.

CHAPTER XXV.

DE PROFUNDIS

I therefore awoke next day relieved from the preoccupation of an
immediate start. Although we were in the very deepest of known
depths, there was something not unpleasant about it. And, besides, we
were beginning to get accustomed to this troglodyte [l] life. I no
longer thought of sun, moon, and stars, trees, houses, and towns, nor
of any of those terrestrial superfluities which are necessaries of
men who live upon the earth's surface. Being fossils, we looked upon
all those things as mere jokes.

The grotto was an immense apartment. Along its granite floor ran our
faithful stream. At this distance from its spring the water was
scarcely tepid, and we drank of it with pleasure.